Expanding audiences and ambitions

September 14, 2008|By John von Rhein, TRIBUNE CRITIC

In its first five seasons of operation, the Harris Theater for Music and Dance has proved an enormous boon to its resident classical music groups, as well as others that use the acoustically admirable, state-of-the-art facility.

While performing in the Harris poses its own challenges -- not least filling the more than 1,400 seats with warm bodies in a depressed economy -- it has had a significant impact on visibility, ticket sales, repertory planning and artistic development, these organizations report.

"The theater has made us more accessible to a wider audience while having a transforming effect on our artistic growth," says Brian Dickie, general director of Chicago Opera Theater, the 300-pound gorilla among the classical music organizations for which the theater was built.

With Chicago's second opera company now sharing downtown turf with such venerable institutions as the Chicago Symphony, Lyric Opera and the Art Institute, "this has enabled us to be seen for what we are -- a professional company of national and possibly even international standard."

Other classical groups that call the Harris Theater home -- including Music of the Baroque, the CSO's MusicNOW contemporary series and the Chicago-based new music ensembles eighth blackbird and Fulcrum Point New Music Project -- agree the facility has proved to be an invaluable marketing tool.

"Not only are people who've never been to our concerts trying us at the Harris, but the theater has allowed us to take on the kinds of large-scale works, such as Haydn's 'The Creation,' that are very difficult to fit on improvised stages in the churches" in which the troupe also performs, says Karen Fishman, executive director of Music of the Baroque.

The Harris' success over its maiden five years has spurred Michael Tiknis, the theater's president and managing director, to present an increasing number of risky, sometimes boundary-busting events the likes of which audiences will hear nowhere else in the area. In November he is presenting eighth blackbird in tandem with drummer Glenn Kotche of the Chicago rock group Wilco. The same month, Fulcrum Point will launch a typically hip, three-season series built around the themes of movies, myths and machines.

Still, if the Harris really means to gather all of Chicago in its embrace, observers say, it needs to work harder to put more events within reach of ordinary pockets. The theater is charging patrons from $68 to $120 each to hear the Jerusalem Symphony, St. Louis Symphony and Daniel Barenboim -- a ticket scale Tiknis defends as "not overly expensive and certainly competitive." Even so, the theater soon will announce it is lowering prices for its musical events similar to what it has already done with tickets to this week's San Francisco Ballet performances. (As a matter of policy, the Harris also offers half-price student tickets in selected seating areas for all music and dance performances.)